Motivation, anxiety, and the difficulty of avoidant control

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Psychophysiology
• Stress Research

Background:

• The ability to exert control over aversive events influences psychological and physiological responses.
• Understanding the nuances of control difficulty is crucial for stress and anxiety research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether difficult avoidant control elicits greater physiological arousal and negative affect compared to easy or impossible control.
• To differentiate between control difficulty arising from effortfulness versus uncertainty.

Main Methods:

• Factorially varied two types of control difficulty: effortfulness and response uncertainty.
• Included conditions of easy, difficult, and impossible avoidant control.
• Measured physiological arousal (pulse rate, digital pulse volume) and self-reported affect (anxiety, stressor unpleasantness).

Main Results:

• Easy or impossible avoidant control generally led to lower physiological arousal, reduced anxiety, and less perceived unpleasantness.
• The condition with high effort and high uncertainty showed unexpectedly low arousal, suggesting a 'giving up' phenomenon.
• Difficult avoidant control, in most cases, induced higher physiological arousal and negative affect.

Conclusions:

• The difficulty in exercising avoidant control significantly impacts stress responses.
• Perceived control difficulty, especially when high and combined with uncertainty, can lead to reduced engagement and stress.
• Findings inform models of motivation, anxiety, and the stress-control relationship.